For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been giving you sermons that are as much for me as they would be for you, maybe more so. Today is another one of those sermons. If you have your Bibles, please turn with me to the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 1. We’ll look at verses 26-38.
By the way, I’ll be reading from the English Standard Version (ESV) instead of the New International Version. The NIV has a verse worded differently than I would like to say to you this morning. It’s not worded wrong, just differently, and so it doesn’t quite get the message across in the way I would like it to. So I’m going with the well-known and equally-respected ESV.
As you’re turning there, let me read to you a story about “The Four Minute Mile.”
Have you ever heard of it? They’d been trying to do it since the days of the ancient Greeks. Someone found the old records of how the Greeks tried to accomplish this. They had wild animals chase the runners, hoping that would make them run faster. They tried tiger’s milk: not the stuff you get down at the supermarket, I’m talking about the real thing.
Nothing worked, so they decided it was physically impossible for a human being to run a mile in four minutes. Our bone structure was all wrong, the wind resistance was too great, our lung power was inadequate. There were a million reasons.
Then one day, in a race in Oxford, England on May 6, 1954, a man named Roger Bannister proved that the doctors, the trainers, and the athletes themselves were all wrong. And, miracle of miracles, the year after Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile, and the year after that, three hundred runners broke the four-minute mile!
Anyway, what does that have to do with our scripture verse today? Well, let’s take a look.
Scripture:
26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” 29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. 30 And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
34 And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”
35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. 36 And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.
So, as I asked earlier, what does that story about the four-mile run have to do with our scripture verse today? And why are we talking about Christmas when we’ve got at least another month left before we do so?
Well, if Walmart can do it… never mind.
The idea is that if something seems impossible, that doesn’t mean that it is. Now, in the story of the runner, it seemed to defy the laws of physics for a human being to run a mile in four minutes or less. And by golly, it’s been done.
But how about a baby being born out of nowhere? Now that defies the laws of physics! A baby in a mother’s womb with no father. That sounds too far-fetched even when it was in Star Wars–but for that to happen in real life?
A lot of people dismissed it 2,000 years ago, and a lot of people still dismiss it now. Regardless, miracles did happen in the Bible, and miracles still happen today, and even for us nobodies in Watkins Glen. Why? As the angel said in verse 37: “For nothing will be impossible with God.”
I want to go back to the first thing the angel said to Mary. Verse 28 says: “And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!”” Some manuscripts add, “Blessed are you among women,” which is where the Catholic Church gets that line in its Rosary form.
And you can sense Gabriel’s delight in Mary. You can sense God’s delight in Mary. But did you notice that Mary didn’t sense that delight? The next two verses say, “But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.”
Now, if it were me, I would have been ecstatic from the beginning. Wow! An angel! And he calls me “O favored one,” and then says, “The Lord is with you!” I mean, how amazing is that? What a great encouragement.
Remember last week, we talked about encouragement. Now, this is encouragement! One spoken sentence from an angel, and I’d be on a high for the rest of my life. But Mary didn’t see it that way.
She’s not the only one. It reminds me of when an angel–some think it might have been Jesus–says to Gideon, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.” Now, that might startle me, but, wow! The Lord is with me? And you are calling me a mighty warrior?
But that wasn’t Gideon’s response either. What was his response?
13 “Pardon me, my lord,” Gideon replied, “but if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about when they said, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.”
Boy, talk about pessimism. This guy had an angelic encounter, and like I said it may have actually been an Old Testament appearance of Jesus because the Bible uses the two words ‘angel’ and ‘Lord’ in this passage interchangeably–but Gideon wasn’t wowed, surprised, or encouraged. But even so, he was granted a lot of grace. His heart was one of genuinely wanting to know, like Mary, how can this be? This seems like an impossible situation.
And, for man, it was an impossible situation.
But if we go back to Luke 1, a few verses prior to our scripture verse, we read this in verses 11-21:
11 And there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. 12 And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him. 13 But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. 14 And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, 15 for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. 16 And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, 17 and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”
18 And Zechariah said to the angel, “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.” 19 And the angel answered him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. 20 And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day that these things take place, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time.”
Now, it doesn’t seem fair, does it? Gideon and Mary question an angel and they get grace, but Zechariah questions the same angel that came to Mary and gets judged. Why?
It was a matter of the heart. Zechariah downright disbelieved–essentially calling Gabriel a liar, and Mary and Gideon believed but didn’t understand. Those are two different things.
It’s okay to not understand. It’s okay to not know how God is going to come through. Everything may seem impossible. But with God, nothing is impossible. It’s not a matter of understanding or figuring it out. It’s a matter of faith. It’s a matter of trusting God at his word.
Numbers 23:19 says: God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?
The story of God parting the Red Sea is a terrific story, but the point of that, when you read it, is that no one was expecting that miracle to happen. No one could even conceive of such a thing. It was absolutely unimaginable.
Exodus 14:10 says, “As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord.”
Then notice their attitude in the next two verses:
11 They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? 12 Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”
But Moses had faith. My favorite verses in this passage, verses 13 and 14, say: Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
Moses didn’t know exactly what God was going to do. Perhaps Moses was thinking God would drop the Egyptians dead in their place, or bring a whirlwind, or cast fire from Heaven or from that pillar of fire that guided them. I mean, he–and the Hebrew people–just saw God perform 10 miraculous signs and wonders, so why wouldn’t he do something now? Of course, when you’re scared, your senses are going to be…less positive–that’s only natural. But God did do something, and it was so unexpected that it must have left them speechless.
This was God’s response in the next verse, “Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on.”
So you see God’s attitude? It’s like when a child comes to us with a problem, and we have to say, “It’s okay, don’t worry, I’ll fix it.” And in a matter of seconds, the zipper is fixed or the toy is fixed, and the child got all worked up over nothing.
But to the child, it was a big deal.
I think it’s kind of like that with God. Because we don’t know how to fix it, because we can’t see a way that it can be fixed, and so, we don’t know if God can. We don’t know if it’s broken for good. You know, we come to mom and dad, and sometimes they say, “Oh well, I guess we just have to throw it out and get a new one.”
As children of God, we have to come to him and ask our Heavenly Father to fix it. And in his power, no matter what it is, it’s no problem.
If we go up a few chapters in Luke to Chapter 18, we read the story of little children coming to Jesus to be blessed. The disciples, who thought the children had little social significance, felt they weren’t important enough for Jesus and tried to push them away. You have to enter into their first-century frame of mind. Jesus was important. They thought he had no time to waste with little children who just got in the way. After all, it’s rude to have kids playing and laughing and making noise and so on…Jesus was trying to teach. They were interrupting him.
Sometimes we treat ourselves that way, don’t we?
But Jesus said they were worthy of his time. They weren’t interrupting him. Their noise and playing were welcome. In fact, Jesus said that he desires everyone to come into his kingdom like children.
I know it seems I’m getting a little off-topic here, but it all ties in together.
What does it mean to enter the kingdom like a child?
Here are a few ways:
- Joyfully
- Expectantly
- Trustingly
- Innocently–having pure intentions, not selfish motives when we pray.
- Humbly–Children, at least well-behaved children, are humble because they know you’re an adult. You’re in charge. You’re big and scary. We should know who God is and who’s in charge. We shouldn’t be demanding or disrespectful or think we’re in charge…like the Pharisees did.
Going back to our scripture verses out of Luke 1, we read about Zechariah and his lack of faith, but his wife, Elizabeth had faith. In verse 36, we read what Gabriel said to Mary, “And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren.”
I want to point out to you from this that I think Mary’s faith in what the angel promised may have had to do with what she may have already known about Elizabeth’s pregnancy. Maybe she didn’t know until the angel told her. Regardless, I think this was a great encouragement for her.
Last week, my sermon was on the topic of encouragement. I said that the Bible is full of God’s promises for us. Not only is it full of God’s promises, but it is also full of examples where God came through for people. As I mentioned, in the parting of the Red Sea, we have God giving Elizabeth a child when she was barren and in her old age…you can imagine how this gave Mary excitement. She couldn’t have a child either, not until after she was married.
Of course, having a child before wedlock brought about its own issues at that time, an unmarried woman about to give birth–what does that mean? She could have been stoned to death.
Mary knew the fulfillment of God’s promise wasn’t going to be easy. And that’s a sermon for another time, yet Mary had faith and accepted not only the miracle but God’s divine purpose for her, as difficult as it was going to be.
But the point I want to make here is that we have not only the encouragement of God’s promises but also the stories of God coming through for His people as he promised. We have the story of his attitude toward Moses like, “It’s nothing, don’t worry about it. Keep going, I got this.”
There are places where we can gain encouragement from other people’s stories. I think of CBN’s The 700 Club. I mean, that show is testimony after testimony of God’s goodness from people all around the globe.
There are testimonies that we have that we can personally give to someone in need. Sometimes we go through the tough stuff just so we can come out with a testimony on the other end that might keep someone going–it could even literally save someone’s life.
It’s like I said last week and the week before, “Only God can turn … A Mess into a Message, A Test into a Testimony, A Trial into a Triumph, A Victim into a Victory.”
After the angel gave Mary that example of the Lord’s miraculous work for her cousin, Elizabeth, Gabriel said, “For nothing will be impossible with God.”
Earlier I said that I was reading out of the ESV instead of the NIV. The NIV puts it this way: “For no word from God will ever fail.” Like I said, it says it differently, but think about how it’s worded now, at the end of the sermon. You could put these two versions together and make two sentences out of them:
“For nothing will be impossible with God. No word from God will ever fail.”
And again, what was Mary’s response?
“Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”
In other words, it was a response of agreement and acceptance. She was basically saying, Amen. The word, amen, is derived from another word that means, “to be sure, fixed or true; to be reliable and to be trusted.” So the word, amen, is an agreement of those things. In other words, more specifically, “so be it, or may it be.” It is an affirmation of placing our faith in the promises of God. It’s why we say it at the end of a prayer, and it’s why we say it as an agreement with someone else. Amen, brother. Amen, pastor. That’s right, preach it.
So Mary responded to the angel with basically an amen.
For us, what should our response to God’s promises be? When things seem all but impossible? The same as Mary’s.
1 Corinthians 1:20 says, “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him, the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God”
Okay, I know that’s kind of worded awkwardly.
Biblestudytools.com went on to explain this verse by saying:
Jesus is the guarantee and confirmation of God’s promises. Christians respond with an amen to the assurance of God’s promises which signifies our affirmation of and trust in God’s faithfulness.
Even when all seems hopeless, God’s promises of miracles are for us still today. All we need is the heart of Mary, Elizabeth, Moses, and Gideon, who all said ‘yes and amen’ to impossible situations.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on First Baptist Church of Watkins Glen
Featured Image by Botto on Unsplash
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